MySQL Forge

Resources for the MySQL Community

PHP BBQ Tour

[edit] 2009 wrap up

Dortmund - true BBQ, party ends at 4am

Berlin

Munich - most attendees (34)

The PHP BBQ tour 2009 is over. Some 145 people came to 7 meetings held in 7 different citties in Germany. The basic idea of having a series of barbecues, shortly before midsummer, to get together and having fun at a very relaxed atmosphere has worked out well.

People got connected. Some attendees came to the PHP user group meetings, who have never been seen at a regular meeting before. Some even travelled 1.5 hours per way to get to the events. Members of the user group Köln/Bonn took the opportunity to visit their friends in Dortmund and members of the user group Stuttgart have travelled to Karlsruhe for the first time.

People had fun. Look at the faces of those who came to the events, check out the photos. Due to bad weather conditions and rain showers there have been only two true BBQs. However, the BBQ has never been over before midnight and the guys in Dortmund did have a party until 4am.

People gave feedback. Beer and summer evenings made people say what they think. I got feedback on the importance and stability of PDO, discussed if the query cache is of any use for todays web applications (e.g. not useful for StudiVZ), meet guys from Nexenta (OpenSolaris with the usability of Linux) and spoke about building communities.

Thanks go to the participating user groups! The user groups in Germany really rock. BTW, what do you guys think about writing a PHP (BBQ) cookbook, shall I set up a wiki page? It does not take much more than a wiki page to organize a tour or to found a new user group. Try it!

[edit] What it is

The PHP BBQ tour is one week tour from Monday, 15.06 - Sunday, 21.06.2009 visiting the german PHP user groups. The tour is an offering and a suggestion to the user group to come together for a barbecue instead of meeting in conference rooms in the middle of the summer, when the days are long. Everybody is invited to join the tour and to visit the PHP user group in his neighbor town.

The barbecue shall be in no way significantly different from any regular user group meeting. The meeting place shall be organized by the user group members. The locals know best where to go for a BBQ. And only the members of the user group can tell how they want to run the evening.

As a member of the Sun/MySQL Connectors team, working on the PHP, C++ and OpenOffice.org drivers for MySQL, I can offer to give a presentation MySQL topics at the evening or be just around. If you would like to hear a presentation on a certain topic, please let me know. I may be able to find some good presenters for you. Giving a presentation, however, is not a must.

The participating user groups shall set the rules.

[edit] Why?

Because it is fun!

I recall wonderful BBQ evenings with the PHP user group Stuttgart - some 6-7 years ago.

Because it is about listening and getting feedback!

Conferences and IRC channels are great for meeting with users and for getting feedback. Though, most conferences are very expensive. Like on IRC channels, you meet the same people on those events since years. Of course it is important to speak to those key persons touring from one conference to another. I have been giving talks at those events and I have been writing for PHP print magazines in the past myself.

But there is a world left and right aside the road: self-organizing and vivid meet ups. Or, Unconferences, such as the PHP Unconference (12.-13.09.2009) in Hamburg. Again, it is often fun to join those events. The only drawback is that people tend to be more nicely dressed at the official events: suit, neck tie... ;-)

[edit] Registration?

Every barbecue is different. Some event organizers ask you to register, for example, for food planning. Please check the columns "Place and Time" as well as "Notes" from the tour dates table.

In addition to registration for a certain event, we have set up a Facebook event for all dates: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=91721323927. You can use it to tell us if you plan to come and what you think about the tour. For those events that require registration it is important that you do not only leave a message on Facebook but first and foremost register wherever the event organizers ask you to register - again: see below.

[edit] Tour dates

Let's start in the south and end the tour in Kiel on Sunday, 21.06.2009. The Kieler Woche, starts on Saturday, 20.06.2009. The Kieler Woche is the biggest summer festival in northern Europe and the city center of Kiel becomes a huge party zone.